Dale Huffman

Specialty: Clay

When my best pots happen I often see myself as a medium through which the work is flowing. I feel that I’m but part of a collaboration with clay and fire. On good days I’m able to play and dance with the clay: The flow can be magical. Close to the edge of what I understand, sometimes days, weeks, years pass before I’m able to grasp what we’ve done together.

Dale’s Biography

After earning his BS in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1972 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976, Dale Huffman spent several years as part of a ragtag crew in an old model T garage in Downs, Illinois repairing air cooled Volkswagens and VW powered corn detasselers. Then he and his wife, Betsy, moved back to Pittsburgh and spent nearly two decades as full-time studio artists, ending up in their current studio in a factory building they bought and rehabbed with two other studios in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. Dale has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work and writings about ceramics have been included in books and leading periodicals from England, Germany, Ireland, Australia and the United States. He has conducted workshops in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, and the USA. He has been selected to participate in international group workshops in Tokoname Japan; Horne, Hjørring, Bornholm, and Hirtshals Denmark; Göteborg and Smedjebacken Sweden; and in the USA at Missouri State University, Notre Dame University, Penland School of Crafts, Texas Tech University, and the International Woodfire Workshop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Dale has designed and built numerous kilns, including the wood kiln that he established in 1998 near Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Dale is a Professor of Art at Carlow University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he served as Chair of the Art Department for 17 years.